Hilling Potatoes

Last year I grew a couple of plantings of potatoes in a few beds to see how they went. My first lot were spectacular. Seven or eight weeks after planting, I hilled up the beds, dragging the soil between the rows up and over the stems of the vigorous foliage. Come harvest I dug masses of beautiful spuds.

'Oh, this is easy', I thought. For the second planting I dug the seed potatoes in deeper, but didn't bother to hill them up.

But when it was time to harvest, I chucked into the compost about half the crop of spuds. Without the hilling up, all the spuds exposed to light were patched with green. And the bigger the potato, the more likely to be poking up through the soil. It was a disheartening exercise, especially in the muddy soils of autumn.

You can't see the green patches in the photos due to the mud -- but they're there!

So this year, when I've planted spuds in all of last year's corn patch (photo at top), I am determined to hill, and hill well!

Seven weeks from planting, the potato tops are up and growing fast. First I run the tiller between the rows. This knocks back any weeds, and loosens the soil so it's easier to shift. In the photo below I've tilled either side of the first row.

Once I've tilled between all the rows, it's time for my trusty hoe. Standing on one side of the row, I use the hoe to drag the earth in the next row towards me onto the plants at my feet. This takes two passes for each row of potatoes ; one for each side. Today I am hilling the first 11 rows (of Pink Eyes), then I'll do the Dutch Creams next week, and the Nicolas after that.

So above is a photo of the second row hilled up. You can see how much of the foliage is covered by the earth (compare the two hilled rows on the left with the unhilled rows on the right). As I hill, I often stop to remove any clods of grass or lumps of rock from the soil of the potato patch. I also pause regularly to clean and sharpen the cutting edge of the hoe -- it's surprising the difference a sharp hoe makes!

After an hour-and-a-half, and nine rows, my arms feel like jelly and there's sweat stinging my eyes. Beautiful sunny afternoon....no breeze, though, and it's goood to stop for a breather between rows....

And after the last four passes up and down the final two rows, the Pink Eyes are hilled, and, as with so much in farming, you can stand back and look at it and say, muscles aching: 'job done'.

Now it's only the Dutch Creams and Nicolas to do....but that's a job for next week.